Graphics Reference
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mode of food preparation for busy people. Food printers, digital recipes
and corresponding food cartridges would enable cooks to create novel and
nutritionally balanced delicacies, opening up new culinary markets.
Concept designs for digital gastronomy fabricators
Unfortunately, digital gastronomy remains mostly conceptual. Big food
manufacturers and companies that sell household appliances haven't yet
launched commercial-grade food printer products. As a result, most food
printing today takes place in research labs, where students, scientists and
engineers ind their way to printing food by accident while trying to solve an
unrelated engineering or design challenge.
Food pastes are a good test material for scientists and engineers. Food is
cheap, plentiful, and non-toxic. Given the diversity of available raw ingredients,
a resourceful investigator can ind food ingredients that mimic the material
properties of much more expensive and rare printing materials.
My students and I accidentally stumbled into food printing as an engineer-
ing accident with the Fab@home printer. It started when one of my graduate
students realized that cake frosting makes a great raw material for prototyp-
ing engineering design projects and calibrating printer settings. Cake frosting
dissolves in water so it's easy to rinse off in the sink . . . or perhaps lick off
